[interpol.int] As one phone crashes down in the Uruguay police booth at South Africa’s
International Police Co-ordination Centre (IPCC) in Pretoria, another
is snatched up in the nearby INTERPOL booth where staff launch into
animated dialogue with colleagues at the INTERPOL Regional Bureau in
Harare about two illegal immigration suspects who have just been
detained on the Zimbabwe-South Africa border.
The centre of police co-operation surrounding
the FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa, the IPCC is where police
officers from the 32 participating countries can liaise not only with
their national administrations but also with INTERPOL’s Major Events
Support Team (IMEST) and the South African Police Services (SAPS).
Liaising closely with INTERPOL’s National Central
Bureau (NCB) in Pretoria and composed of experienced specialised police
officers and operational assistants, INTERPOL’s IMEST team – totalling
50 members – was in place across South Africa well ahead of the
opening of the World Cup. Its objective? To help secure the event. How?
By making critical data on wanted criminals, stolen travel documents
and stolen motor vehicles accessible to the event’s key security
players across the country.
Deployed to six key strategic areas – including
international airports and road border crossings – in addition to the
main IPCC unit, INTERPOL staff assisted local law enforcement officers
secure their country’s borders by giving them hands-on access to
INTERPOL’s police services throughout the FIFA World Cup 2010 in South
Africa.
Animated conversations resume within the INTERPOL
booth as the IMEST team at the Beit Bridge Border Crossing – one of the
mobile INTERPOL teams in the field – requests that INTERPOL’s General
Secretariat Headquarters’ Command and Co-ordination Centre (CCC)
contact five INTERPOL National Central Bureaus (NCBs) to urgently seek
more information on the two suspects caught using fraudulent passports.
IMEST staff hurry to their desks and vigorous typing can be heard as
messages are sent to police around the world via INTERPOL’s secure
network.
Addressing critical security challenges
One of the gravest threats for major events is
terrorists and other international criminals using falsified, stolen or
lost passports to conceal their identities and enter the country to
perpetrate their crimes.
The 2010 FIFA World Cup is the most-watched sporting
event in the world, making it a perfect stage for terrorists to send
negative and disturbing messages to a far-reaching audience.
Running from 11 June to 11 July, the FIFA World Cup
2010 drew 32 football teams and accompanying sports staff, thousands of
journalists and more than one million spectators to South Africa,
making it an enticing target for terrorists wishing to exploit the
worldwide media opportunity.
“The FIFA World Cup is not just a South African
event. From a security perspective, it’s an international event, with
all the security risks that entails,” commented Jean-Michel Louboutin,
INTERPOL’s Executive Director for Police Services, deployed to South
Africa to ensure INTERPOL was providing maximum assistance to local
security services.
“The safety and security of players, spectators and
all those involved in the 2010 FIFA World Cup is INTERPOL’s top priority
right now, which is why we are working closely with SAPS and FIFA in
making Africa’s first ever World Cup secure and successful” he added.
To address the threat of terrorism and other
cross-border crime, INTERPOL’s objective is to make sure that
cutting-edge policing tools are accessible and at the ready across the
country, strategically placed in the hands of the field officers who
need to identify potential security threats.
INTERPOL support in the field
Securing ports of entry
Six mobile IMEST teams were deployed to the principal
ports of entry to South Africa, providing law enforcement officers there
with access to INTERPOL databases to help them detect potential
threats of terrorism, hooliganism and serious crime:
- Johannesburg Airport
- Lanseria Airport
- Cape-Town Airport
- Durban Airport
- Lebombo Border Crossing (border crossing with Mozambique)
- Beit Bridge Border Crossing (border crossing with Zimbabwe)
Together the teams conducted nearly 600,000
on-the-spot checks against INTERPOL’s databases which contain data on
more than 7 million motor vehicles, nearly 22 million stolen or lost
travel documents and more than 63,000 wanted persons.
Through hands-on connection to I-24/7 – INTERPOL’s
global police communications system – IMEST staff had instant, direct
access not only to INTERPOL’s databases but also the secure INTERPOL
network enabling the exchange of urgent messages and vital police data
such as fingerprints, images and wanted persons notices with any of INTERPOL’s
188 member countries.
International airports: key strategic
locations to detect potential criminals
One of the six mobile IMEST teams was dispatched to
South Africa’s largest international airport in Johannesburg to assist
local law enforcement in checking the identities of the hundreds of
travellers pouring into South Africa on the 180 international flights
which land at Johannesburg airport every day.
With direct access to the INTERPOL Batch Search Web
Service (IBSWS) – known as I-BATCH – IMEST staff processed and checked
thousands of identity details for targeted flights. One particular case
enabled the SAPS to identify a South American traveller as a known
hooligan with a violent criminal history. He was refused entry to South
Africa and returned to his home country.
Beit Bridge
Border Crossing
One of South Africa’s busiest border posts and one of
the only points to offer direct road access between Zimbabwe and South
Africa, Beit Bridge Border Crossing handles roughly 1,000 light
vehicles and between 600 and a 1,000 trucks daily. It is also believed
to be a route for vehicles stolen from South Africa and bound for
markets in Eastern Africa and Europe, and for illegal immigration into
South Africa. This was therefore a key site for an INTERPOL IMEST
mobile team.
Three IMEST police officers detached from INTERPOL’s
Regional Bureaus in Yaoundé, Nairobi and Abidjan for the duration of
the World Cup, were posted to Beit Bridge Border Crossing to ensure
local law enforcement officials had the support they needed. More than
6,300 checks were made against INTERPOL databases by the Beit Bridge
IMEST team, permitting them make international connections in a number
of cases and liaise with INTERPOL NCBs in different parts of the world,
supported by the CCC.
In one instance, two Pakistani men were stopped as
they tried to enter South Africa through the Beit Bridge crossing on a
bus. They claimed to be travelling to attend the World Cup yet were in
possession of no tickets for any of the matches. Their identity
documents did not match the identities suggested by other documents in
their possession. As the Zimbabwe Police investigated this suspected
case of illegal immigration, INTERPOL’s Regional Bureau in Harare was
able to alert the law enforcement agencies in five member countries in
an effort to ascertain their true identity and have their fingerprints
checked. The investigation is on-going.
Multi-faceted police assistance
IMEST staff are torn from their concentrated focus on
the screen of INTERPOL’s database and secure network dashboard by the
phone hotline. The intense pace picks up again as news spreads that
Congolese national Moumba Munanga – the subject of INTERPOL’s “Infra
Red” operation targeting 450 fugitives worldwide convicted for
committing serious offences – and wanted by INTERPOL France and Bahrain
for counterfeit currency, forgery and money laundering, has been
detected by INTERPOL databases at one of the international airports.
Voices spring from booth to booth confirming the hit on INTERPOL
databases and the arrest by SAPS police, marking another success for
joint INTERPOL-SAPS security action.
Supporting national investigations
The IMEST team was able to support SAPS investigations
into a suspected fraudulent passport production and selling network
operating from the South African capital with clients across the
globe. When SAPS arrested 21 Pakistani nationals for distributing
fraudulent ID documents, INTERPOL’s IMEST team immediately ensured
their photographs and fingerprints were compared with the INTERPOL
General Secretariat databases and also shared with the INTERPOL National
Central Bureau in Islamabad. INTERPOL provided SAPS with the
international outreach it needed to investigate this case of serious
crime beyond its own borders. Investigations continue.
Beyond the South African borders
Demonstrating the strength of national, regional and
international police co-operation in securing the World Cup, and
testimony to INTERPOL’s resolve to secure the football event from all
angles, is the success of operation SOGA III, carried out by INTERPOL’s
liaison office in Bangkok and timed to coincide with the World Cup.
Co-ordinated with China (including Hong Kong and
Macao), Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand and aimed at breaking up
illegal soccer gambling networks operating within these countries, the
results speak for themselves: as at 9 July 2010, over 3,300 arrests
across Asia and the seizure of over 144 million US dollars in betting
records in addition to USD$ 1.8 million in cash.
Co-operation key to closing in on criminals
It is through strong police co-operation that the law
enforcement community at large was able to help SAPS make the 2010 FIFA
World Cup as safe and secure as it was. Information sharing and
communication – both within South Africa and globally – is the most
effective and efficient means of securing major events, transforming
borders seen as opportunities by criminals, into obstacles against
organized crime.
A clear indication of the strength of SAPS-INTERPOL
mutual commitment to 2010 FIFA World Cup security, SAPS National
Commissioner Bheki Cele travelled to the General Secretariat
headquarters in France one month prior to the opening of the World Cup
to be updated on INTERPOL’s ongoing preparations to support national
security for the tournament.
Two months earlier, FIFA hosted a security-themed
meeting at its headquarters in Zurich – the first of its kind in FIFA’s
history – bringing together INTERPOL, Chiefs of Police, Heads of
Security and police liaison officers from all 32 participating nations,
providing a vital opportunity to share a comprehensive planning
approach and co-ordination of security.
An excellent example of the power of police
co-operation in international investigations and operations, INTERPOL’s
IMEST team in South Africa enjoyed outstanding collaboration from SAPS
(detectives unit, crime intelligence, and special investigation
units), police liaison officers from the 32 participant countries and
representatives of the Southern Africa Regional Police Chiefs
Co-operation Organisation (SARPCCO), in addition to FIFA staff.
“From what I have seen, FIFA has spared no efforts to
make clear the priority it places on supporting the South African
Police Service’s and INTERPOL’s efforts to ensure security for teams,
visitors and the general public during the World Cup" commented
INTERPOL’s Secretary General Ronald K. Noble in a media release
circulated internationally on 12 May 2010.
INTERPOL support : a vital security
component
This seven-week long IMEST was INTERPOL largest ever
deployment, involving 50 people in the field and the 24-hour assistance
of staff working with them from the General Secretariat headquarters
in Lyon.
Their collective efforts served to assist SAPS secure
its country and 2010 FIFA World Cup fans by making sure only genuine
spectators and tourists were granted access to the country, and
potential threats thwarted.
Contributing to the safety and security of
spectators, teams, officials, and residents of any country which hosts
an international event, is a strong priority for the world’s largest
police organization. INTERPOL has provided assistance for a wide
range of major events across the globe, including the Vancouver Winter
Olympics earlier this year, Beijing Olympics, the 2006 FIFA World Cup in
Germany and the 2007 Cricket World Cup hosted across nine countries
in the Caribbean.
The organization will continue to provide operational
support in the field to assist member countries who host major events of
this kind. Further IMEST deployments are already being planned for
the forthcoming 65th Session of the United General Assembly in New
York, and for the Asian Games taking place in November in Guangzhou,
China and with each IMEST deployment, behind it is the strength of
police co-operation across 188 member countries.
Source: http://www.interpol.int/Public/ICPO/PressReleases/PR2010/News20100709b.asp
